The children's book "Duck Enough to Fly" I did with Jerry Barrack and Doug Goodell began with a journal entry I wrote just after Jerry Barrack and I witnessed (and Jerry photographed) the Wood Ducklings making their first big splash at the Celery Farm on May 11, 2004 (not May 10 as had been previously thought).

I realize now that I wrote this two days after Mother's Day, which may explain a thing or two.

I am posting this at 10:05 a.m., which as I recall was when the first baby jumped on this day 13 years ago. I think the journal entry also stands by itself...

Tuesday, May 11 (2004)

The Celery Farm put on its most amazing display this morning, no more than a half-hour ago, and my heart is still pounding.

Jerry and I were standing on the Warden's Watch, logging a few extra minutes of sunshine, when two Wood Ducks flew in, making their high-pitched calls as they glided past the platform and landed on the water.

The male, in beautiful plumage, landed about 20 feet past the nearest Wood Duck box. The female landed in front of it, swam for a moment, and then flew atop the box and looked in.

A tiny head peered out, and the female flew to the water in front of the box. 

Stiles Thomas and I started to clean out the Wood Duck boxes on Lake Appert earlier this month, but the ice sounded almost ghost-like and we skedaddled -- but not before I photographed the inside one of the nesting boxes donated by Dr. Haas last year.

On the left is the ladder the ducklings climb to the opening when it's time to jump.  The bottom of the box is wood chips, a few feathers and an unhatched duck egg.

        Whenever photographer Jerry Barrack and I do a presentation on "Duck Enough To Fly," about baby Wood Ducks jumping out of their nesting box (and taking big steps in life), we invariably get asked:

    How does the mother wood duck fit inside that nesting box? The hole seems too small.

   Our reply is typically: "You have to see it to believe it," and then show a photo of a wood duck as she fits through the hole.

   Can anyone solve a mystery?

       After the floods of mid-April, a pair of wood ducks discovered the wood duck nesting box, which is about 10 yards away from the screech owl box.

   I have seen the male atop the box several times since then in the morning.

   Thanks to the screech-cam, we all can know what is going on with Mrs. Ace and the eggs in the screech owl box.

   But our wood duck box is camera-less, and I am scratching my head as to what is going on inside.

  Namely: Twice in the last week, I have seen the male screech owl sit in the opening of the wood duck box in the late afternoon.

    At one point, I watched him stick his head out of the opening from below, so he has definitely been inside the box itself.

  But I have seen female wood duck fly inside the box twice in the past few days as well.

    The question is: What is going on inside the wood duck box?

     Did the male screech owl share the box -- at least for a little while -- with a female wood duck sitting on eggs?

    I think I see another miniature video-cam in my future.

      *      *     *

     Postscript: To top things off, when Mrs. Ace was involved with hatching her eggs on Sunday, a female wood duck flew in, landed on the owl-box roof and seemed to want to get in.

   She got an aggressive bill clatter from Mrs. Ace, and the three-inch opening was too small for her to get in anyway. 

    Strangely, turf wars between screech owls and wood ducks are not that uncommon.

   In fact, a friend send me a research paper about a screech owl who incubated a couple of wood duck eggs after the Mom had dumped them in the owl box.

   The ducks flew soon after they hatched,

leaving Mrs. Owl with the strangest case of empty nest syndrome ever.

   No lie.